MENA hotels suffer Ramadan revenue declines

HOTEL DECLINES: Hotels in the MENA region saw revenues fall during August, says STR Global. (Getty Images)

Hotels in the Middle East saw their revenue per available room figure fall dramatically in August, along with occupancy rates, a new report has said.

The declines in revPAR (revenue per available room), ADR (average daily rate) and occupancy have been attributed to slower business during Ramadan by hotel benchmarking expert STR Global.

“With Ramadan taking place from August 21 to September 19 2009, the Middle East/Africa region dropped 21 percent in RevPAR for August, falling for the first time behind Europe and the Americas in terms of monthly RevPAR declines,” said STR Global managing director Elizabeth Randall in comments published by Hotelier Middle East on Sunday.

The region’s occupancy dropped 18.2 percent to 59.2 percent while ADR decreased 3.7 percent to $133.31 and RevPAR decreased to $78.89.

Muscat, Oman, reported the largest occupancy decrease, falling 38.2 percent to 35.4 percent followed by Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with a 31.5 percent decrease to 38.8 percent occupancy.

Muscat and Riyadh also experienced revPAR declines of more than 30 percent, along with Cairo and Dubai.

Muscat revPAR decreased 38.5 percent to $60.50; Cairo fell 36.5 percent to $73.10; Dubai decreased 33.6 percent to $100.46; and Riyadh dropped 30.1 percent to $80.67.

Dubai posted the largest ADR decrease, falling 21.9 percent to $156.73.

“We expect this to be a temporary position. For the year-to-date the region still showed the least declines of all four regions. The RevPAR for most Middle Eastern markets suffered from double-digit occupancy declines as business slowed down,” added Randell.

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